REPORT OF 



Whilst these feelings operate on the casual visitor, the 

 members of the Society also are more assiduous in bestow- 

 ing gifts upon an establishment which displays them to so 

 much advantage. Spacious accommodations are not with- 

 out a powerful effect in inviting contributions. No man is 

 pleased to find that his donations have been consigned to 

 obscurity. Nor is this a mortification only to an idle vanity ; 

 but the donor who is influenced by higher motives may 

 justly expect that what he bestows from a principle of 

 public spirit, shall be applied effectively to the public 

 advantage. And thus a perfect system of exhibition, how- 

 ever costly, compensates its expenses by its fruits; and 

 those scientific arrangements and elaborate catalogues which 

 the Keeper of the Museum is employed in making, to inter- 

 pret its contents, will be found to avail equally in ren- 

 dering it at the same time popular and instructive. 



The most striking tribute which has been offered to the 

 Society's enlarged means of exhibition, is the donation which 

 the Curator of Entomology ^ has made of his whole private 

 collection of British Insects. Fifteen hundred specimens 

 in excellent preservation have thus been added to the means 

 already provided for studying these minute productions 

 of nature. It is not often that a collection of so much 

 interest is given away by the hand which formed it ; and 

 in the sacrifice of these valuable fruits of a long cherished 

 pursuit to a public repository, the Meeting will not fail to 

 recognize a proof not only of the uncommon liberality of the 

 donor, but of the high estimation in which the Museum is held. 



'Thomas Backhouse, Esq. 



